Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

GALLAGHER (—) (): I will, of course, be supporting the motion moved by Senator Keneally today. To start at the very top: there is no fundamentally greater responsibility for any government than to keep its citizens safe. It's there to protect every Australian. What we have at the moment is a catastrophic failure of keeping elderly Australians safe. This minister and this government have been unable to do that. There is no greater example of the shambles that is this government—their disunity and their infighting and the distractions, taking away from actually dealing with the issues that everyday Australians face—than the crisis in aged care, the crisis in aged care that the minister for aged-care services refuses to acknowledge. There is a crisis. You cannot fix a situation if you don't acknowledge the crisis that is there right now. Everyone is saying it's a crisis. The workers in the sector, the families who have loved ones and individual residents are saying they've never seen the quality of care so poor as what they are experiencing right now. More than half of aged-care facilities have outbreaks, affecting thousands of staff and thousands of residents. There have been 587 deaths since January—587 deaths in the last 39 days—and the defence of that by this minister and Minister Hunt is, firstly, 'Oh well, you're old, so you're going to die anyway.' The second defence one is: 'Oh well, there's a lot of COVID out there. Therefore, sorry, aged care: you're just going to get it. And unfortunately, because you're old, it's going to be more severe for you.'

We have had the benefit of seeing what has happened in the Northern Hemisphere for two seasons now. And we saw what happened in Victoria. We understood the need to get vaccinated and to get boostered, and to keep those facilities safe with PPE, testing and a workforce. Yet here we are, with more widespread community transmission, and what do we see? We see failures of PPE, failures of workforce, failures of testing, and failures for people living in those facilities. They're isolated, dislocated, and in their dying moments are hoisted out of the facility and into hospital. And this minister went to the cricket.

I am sorry, Minister, if you think I'm misrepresenting this, but you told me you didn't want resources diverted away from dealing with what was happening in aged care. That's what you told me. I took that at face value. I didn't hold a hearing without your attendance, and you popped up at the cricket. That is exactly what happened. You said you were too busy dealing with the crisis and that you couldn't come. When you go outside and talk to people who are witnessing what's happening in aged care—and they talk to me about that—they don't think it passes the pub test. So don't try to rewrite it: you made the decision to go to the cricket when aged care was in crisis.

This minister, whom we are holding to account today, is not a new minister. This minister took on his first portfolio responsibilities in 2004. He has been minister for aged-care services for the last 2½ years—it's not like he is learning the job. We've had report after report. We've had an interim report from the royal commission entitled Neglect. Someone has to take responsibility for this failure. This government won't take responsibility. The Senate must stand up and speak on behalf of all of the people in aged care and the loved ones who are contacting my office, incredibly upset that they weren't able to be with their loved ones when they were passing away. They were locked out, hearing their loved one on the phone telling them they hadn't been showered or eaten any food. That's the anger out there about aged care. We are not playing politics with this. These are older Australians in their most vulnerable moments, and this government pretends it has done everything it can, saying, 'It's just a pandemic,' and, 'Then Omicron came.' Well, it's not good enough. That's why this minister should resign, and the Prime Minister should sack him if he doesn't. (Time expired)